Sharon Richardson, now seven years out of prison, sits in the dining area of her transitional housing apartment in Queens. An egg boils on the stove. Her laptop is open and she’s sorting through accounting paperwork for her catering business. Richardson doesn’t know where the last seven years went, or the twenty before that, when she was incarcerated in Bayview Correctional facility for killing her abusive boyfriend.

What she does know is that she is excited for January, 2018. Bayview Correctional Facility is being torn down and replaced with “The Women’s Building,” a metamorphosis reflective of Richardson’s own growth. “This dark space is going to be turned into a space of light,” Richardson said, her face glowing. “It’s going to be turned into a space where young women and girls can come, of all ages, races, whatever the situation is, whether you were formerly incarcerated, have issues at home [or] domestic violence,” to receive services specifically devoted to women.

This change in infrastructure signals a shift in the way women’s issues are handled in New York City. But the construction updates have not been met with updates in legislation, either at the state or national level. A bill New York State bill, The Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA), which was first proposed in 2011, has still not made it to Senate for a vote. Further, there is no Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the New York State Constitution, nor in the U.S. Constitution.

When asked whether our country’s laws works for women, Gail T. Smith, Director of the Women In Prison Project at The Correctional Association of N.Y., said “No.” “We are in a country that has 33 percent of the incarcerated women worldwide,” Smith added. Incarceration for women has risen by 700% nationally from 1980-2014 according to a report by The Prisoner Reentry Institute of John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In New York City, the percentage of incarcerated men has declined steadily in the last five years, but the same cannot be said for women.

Meanwhile, mass shootings continue to escalate across the country, mostly at the hands of white men, many of whom have histories of abusing their partners. An Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund analysis of mass shootings from 2009 to 2015 found that in over half of mass shootings, the shooters killed intimate partners or other family members. When women like Richardson defend themselves against domestic assault, however, they face incarceration.

“My sentence was 20-to-life,” Richardson said. “As long as you have life on the back, they could hit you and hit you and hit you [with more time]. The parole commissioners that come in that day could just be having bad day, and just not like you and say, ‘you know what? we’re not letting her go home.’”

A current bill proposed in New York State would help women like Richardson, who were convicted of crimes directly related to their abuse. The Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA) would allow judges to sentence these survivors to either shorter prison terms or community-based alternatives to prison. It would also provide domestic violence survivors currently in prison the ability to apply to the courts for resentencing.

According to Saima Anjam, Director of Public Policy at New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NYSCADV), this bill is something that many people around the state have been fighting for. “The New York State assembly has passed this legislation for the past two years in a row and I think it was with very strong bipartisan support for both years that it passed,” Anjam said. Unfortunately, however, the New York State Senate majority has not allowed the bill to come to the floor for a vote. “The senate majority has chosen not to prioritize this and not to move on this, despite there being strong support for it from the rest of their members,” Anjam said. “I’m not quite sure why.”

“I think the law is funny,” Richardson said, referring to DVSJA. “They pass what they want immediately. Anything that they have a really strong issue with, it just kind of is.” Richardson believes this law is being blocked due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the severity of domestic abuse. “I think it has always been that way,” she said, noting that she thinks things have gotten better since she was arrested in 1990. For Smith, it has to do with “a profound belief in the correctional system that we have now, and a belief that our system of justice is equal.” “It’s not,” she said.

Equal Rights activists argue that an ERA would provide the necessary step towards guaranteeing a more equal justice system for women, by laying a sturdy framework for other laws. “The ERA would go a long way in ensuring that survivors of domestic violence, stalking, and rape are adequately protected under the law,” Desiree Hoffman, Director of Policy and Advocacy at YWCA wrote in a statement on the YWCA blog.

Still, Smith is not convinced that an ERA would help pass DVSJA through the Senate. “If the Equal Rights Amendment simply passed as a constitutional amendment–just that happening–I don’t really see that, unfortunately, making a huge difference in what we’re trying to do to protect women from unjust sentencing,” she said. “We already have a whole raft of Supreme Court decisions and legislation that say that they create equal protection for women. And the reality is, that does not play out in almost any form. It particularly does not play out when we’re talking about the most vulnerable women in our community.”

“Now, if the ERA passed and that sparked a wide-ranging set of intersectional legislation that really created a groundwork for greater justice for all women, across racial lines, class lines, LGBTQ, ability, all of those things–that might be different,” Smith added. “Maybe the process of that passage will educate people and might spark a deeper understanding of the way the system actually works against women, and particularly women of color. But the simple passage, if it was not rooted in strong education and a change of heart on the part of policy makers in this country, it would be an empty promise, just like the court decisions and legislation have been an empty promise.”

In reality, Smith said, many more women are affected by domestic assault than those incarcerated for defending themselves against it. “There’s a much larger number of people who have survived domestic violence who have become drug addicted because of trauma in their lives, who have committed minor offenses at the behest of their partner or to smooth things over, who will not be eligible [for DVSJA],” Smith said. “The overwhelming majority of women who are incarcerated today have survived some kind of violence.” The Correctional Association of New York found that three-quarters of incarcerated women have histories of severe physical abuse by an intimate partner during adulthood, and 82% suffered serious physical or sexual abuse as children. “The fact is about three women a day are killed by their partners,” Smith added.

“It seems unfair, and it may be unfair, and the criminal justice system may have it completely wrong, but in lieu of all that, I still try to make the best of that situation, and create something,” Richardson added. “I am part of the Women’s building now, part of something, and storytelling, and legacy, and film, and pictures, and writings that will all be in that building. I’m going to be part of that wall, that memory, forever, for as long as this earth is existing.”

Christina Shaman is a 2017 fellow in the Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program, funded by the Sy Syms Foundation. The Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program at Women’s eNews fellowship supports editorial and development opportunities for editorial interns in the pursuit of journalistic excellence.

]]>Dear Colleague: When Due Process Matters More Than Equal Rightshttps://womensenews.org/2017/10/dear-colleague-when-due-process-matters-more-than-equal-rights/
https://womensenews.org/2017/10/dear-colleague-when-due-process-matters-more-than-equal-rights/#commentsThu, 12 Oct 2017 18:40:20 +0000http://womensenews.org/?p=2779558Maddie Rodriguez had gone through all the proper channels. The night she was raped, she reported it to campus police at Temple University. She went to Philadelphia’s Special Victims Unit and did a rape kit. She was interviewed by detectives and spoke with the District Attorney, who told her there was “not sufficient evidence for her case to go through to criminal trial.”

Unfortunately, she wasn’t at all surprised by this response. Out of every 1,000 rapes in the United States, only six perpetrators will be incarcerated, according to statistics from the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). Since the criminal justice system requires evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, Rodriguez said she was “pretty much guaranteed not to win, because in the end, my situation was more of a he said/she said kind of deal.” Still, she was glad she was able to go ahead with a school trial, which had required a ‘preponderance of evidence standard,’ or 51% proof that the crime was committed. Due to recent decisions made by the Trump Administration, however , that standard could soon change.

On September 22nd, almost one year to the day that Rodriguez was raped, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos rescinded critical Title IX guidance, most notably, the Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) issued by the Obama administration in 2011, which required all federally funded schools to adopt the minimal standard of proof for sexual assault cases.

DCL was a source of controversy since its passage, with many arguing that it was unconstitutional because it led schools to deny accused students their due process rights. This concern was echoed by acting assistant secretary at the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), Candice Jackson, in her letter rescinding DCL. As a result of increased pressure from the 2011 directive, the letter reads, “many schools have established procedures for resolving allegations that ‘lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process, are overwhelmingly stacked against the accused, and are in no way required by Title IX law or regulation.’”

Law professor, Audrey Wolfson Latourette, who recently published a law review article addressing the Title IX OCR directives, agrees, describing the Obama era guidelines as a “grievous assault against due process.” “I have witnessed so many cases where the universities took steps which were markedly damaging without sufficient justification,” Latourette said, citing an incident of due process violation at The University of Cincinnati, among others. “Of course we want to make up for past treatment—erroneous, egregious treatment of women—where these assaults were ignored. But to do so at the expense of denying the accused these fundamental rights?” she asked. “What is the point of a hearing that is not fair?”

For Angélique Roché, Vice President of External Affairs at the Ms. Foundation for Women, the argument for due process is being used as a tool to distract from the real problem. “It really has to do with the fact that we are dealing with a system that is innately blaming and shaming women for something that happened to them,” Roché said. “These protections were there for a reason.”

In Rodriguez’s case, she firmly believes that the accused had just as many rights throughout the Title IX trial as she did. “There was no difference in the process for me and for him. We both got the exact same guidance,” Rodriguez said. “I know for a fact he had the same amount of interviews I had, I know he was given the same information of how the trial would run, of what he would need to prepare, of the witnesses that he was able to have. He knew he was able to have a legal counsel and an emotional support person. He was made aware of everything I was made aware of.” Rodriguez and the accused both gave opening statements and a brief testimony. There was a screen between them, so Rodriguez did not have to view the accused rapist.

“Instead of me directly asking him questions, both he and I would write questions on a piece of paper. The paper would be given to a judge and she would deem whether the question was appropriate…then she would ask the questions,” Rodriguez says. She added that she was more confident going into trial because she knew she would not have to see her rapist. “All the other times I’ve seen him around campus…I had a panic attack. So if I had to see him or hear him directly ask me questions that day, I don’t think I would have been able to make it through the trial,” she said.

The judge found the accused guilty of rape. The verdict was then delivered to a school board, who decided that the rapist be put on Temple probation and removed from university housing. “When the judge found him responsible, he got really angry. He was throwing chairs and slamming doors,” Rodriguez said. He was supposed to be allowed ten days to appeal the judge’s decision, but they ended up giving him extra time, and we never found out why.” “Ultimately, he did appeal, but his reasons for appealing were not good enough for Temple to have a retrial,” she added.

The emphasis on due process rights for the accused does make sense, however. “Due process is really, really important,” said lawyer and equal rights advocate, Jean Sweeney. “It is what our democracy stands on.” In fact, due process is the only command mentioned twice in the constitution, both in the fifth and 14th amendments. Meanwhile, an explicit gender equality guarantee is nowhere to be found.

For Roché, the conversation surrounding Title IX would be different if an ERA were in place. “It goes back to the conversation of valuing the lives of women and girls,” she said.

Legal precedent around Title IX could change too. “If you put the 24 words to the Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution of the United States, we have a legal framework that says to every judge, to every legislature, to every child in school, to everyone…that women are to be honored and respected equally with men,” Sweeney said. “Without that legal framework, what happens is it’s just done with piecemeal legislation [like Title IX], so it can be changed and rolled back so women’s rights become a political football.”

In Sweeney’s perspective, Title IX was the “backdoor” to the Equal Rights Amendment that never passed. It was passed by Congress in 1972, the same year the ERA was sent to the states for ratification. For Sweeney, the Obama era directives, along with former Vice President Biden’s “It’s On Us” campaign, were doing what the ERA, if it were in place, would be doing. Julie Graber, CEO of Gender EQA, a company that uses data to determine gender equity in business and public policy, agrees. Title IX is “the closest thing we’ve ever come to really attempting to guarantee equal rights for women,” Graber said.

Perhaps that is why the rescinding of Title IX guidance feels like a step backwards for many survivors advocates. “These are our rights. These are things that should be guaranteed to us,” Roché said.

Christina Shaman is a 2017 fellow in the Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program, funded by the Sy Syms Foundation. The Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program at Women’s eNews fellowship supports editorial and development opportunities for editorial interns in the pursuit of journalistic excellence.

]]>https://womensenews.org/2017/10/dear-colleague-when-due-process-matters-more-than-equal-rights/feed/2From Constitution to Classroom: Can an ERA Prevent Sexual Assault in K-12 Schools?https://womensenews.org/2017/09/from-constitution-to-classroom-can-an-era-prevent-sexual-assault-in-k-12-schools/
Fri, 08 Sep 2017 00:19:05 +0000http://womensenews.org/?p=2597120The end of August brought with it a set of annual U.S. traditions. K-12 students went back to school, and feminists celebrated Women’s Equality Day. But on August 26th, which commemorates women gaining the right to vote in 1920, we cannot truly celebrate women’s equality, because there is still no Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the U.S. Constitution.

This may not matter to the majority of K-12 students, but it should, because according to gender equity consultant, Roberta Francis, promoting gender equality is necessary to prevent sexualized violence at the K-12 level.

While public discourse surrounding campus sexual assault tends to focus on higher education, it is also a problem for students age five to 18 years-old at schools across the country. In May, the Associated Press released a report announcing that 17,000 students in K-12 schools throughout the U.S. have reported sexual assault over a four-year period. Over the past ten years, calls to Equal Rights Advocates’ Advice and Counseling Hotline have increased by 400%, with many calls reporting sexual harassment of young women by both educators and peers.

Despite the increasing reports over the last few years, however, this problem isn’t new. In 1993, Francis addressed the New Jersey Department of Education about the connection between gender equality and gender-based violence. Francis believes, in fact, that gender dynamics in school mirror gender dynamics in society. “There are certain parts of the brain having to do with critical thinking that really don’t even mature until after high school,” Francis says. Students are therefore vulnerable to accepting, as well as repeating, the traditional patriarchal messages they see at home and in the media. Young children learn from the world around them and bring that knowledge back into the classroom. “It is essential to progress as quickly as we can,” Francis added, “And an ERA would be a powerful tool in achieving that progress.”

Double Edge Sword

In the nearly 25 years since Francis addressed the New Jersey Department of Education about sexualized violence among adolescents. some advancements have been made. In 1994, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) created the first U.S. federal legislation to acknowledge domestic violence and sexual assault as crimes. In 2013, the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination (Campus SaVE) Act increased requirements of transparency about sexual violence on campus. And in 2014, the Department of Education publicly released the list of colleges and universities under investigation for mishandling sexual assault for the first time.

“I think there has been a lot of good progress and awareness among educators, the public, young women, programs that deal with young women, and so on,” Francis says. “As with anything, including the laws of physics, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So for the general awareness and great strides we’ve made in individual social, political, public policy realms, the more the pushback.”

This Country is Not Different from Many Others

For Shelby Quast, Director of Equality Now’s Americas office, this pushback against equality is part of a global trend. “We’re starting to see in the United Kingdom [and] in the U.S. movements popping up that are looking to push back rights or looking to push back protections, whether they’re based on race or gender or sex,” Quast says. “We’re seeing some real backsliding happening with regard to women’s and girl’s rights. Sexual assault fits within that.”

Quast, who previously worked for the UN to address gender justice in conflict-affected countries, said that those in the U.S. may have viewed sexual assault of children as an issue that only other countries faced. “And I think now what we’re learning is that it’s all of us,” she said. To illustrate her point, she brought up her work with schoolgirls in Sierra Leone, who were prevented from continuing school because they were pregnant. Their pregnancies were often a result of sexual abuse by their teachers. “It just became a social acceptance that if girls want to be educated, they have to be sexually exploited. We found that almost no girl that had made her way through the school system up to college had not experienced sexual exploitation or sexual assault,” Quast says. “We find that people were outraged by that,” Quast adds. “But then when you come back into this country, you start to say, well wait a second–maybe that looks like the same thing.”

The Washington Post reported in 2014 that an average of 15 U.S. students per week were sexually victimized by the educators entrusted with protecting them. And while Title IX, the federal law that ensures equal access to education (partly by responding to claims of sexual assault) applies to K-12 schools, these schools have no national requirement to track or disclose sexual violence. As of August 2nd, there are 154 sexual violence cases under Title IX* investigation by the Office of Civil Rights at 137 K-12 U.S. schools. Quast says that an ERA would help close the gaps that allow for sexual assault in schools, and that it would send a clear message to other countries that we do not have an ERA in our constitution.

While the United States helped write constitutional imperatives for the equality of the sexes for other countries, including Japan and Afghanistan, its own is one of only 32 constitutions across the world that does not include an explicit gender guarantee. It is also one of only seven countries in the world that has not ratified the international bill of rights for women.

“The U.S. needs to ensure in the basis of our constitution that we’re really demanding equality,” Quast says. “We should not be fighting the fact that women and girls should be equally valued. We seem to find that to be an international standard that should be there, so the fact that we find resistance in trying to pass an equal rights amendment…I think that is very concerning,” she adds.

There is No Magic Wand

It is not just law dictating equality for women that prevents sexual assault, however. While laws may reflect political will, it is more important how countries enact these laws. Fortunately, some international steps toward equality have recently been taken, as in September, 2015 when the UN General Assembly adopted a 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which cites goals for achieving gender equality and eliminating violence against women. These goals were signed by every country, including the United States.

*Editor’s Note: On Sept. 7, 2017, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ announced that the Trump Administration is planning to weaken protections for sexual assault survivors in schools.

Christina Shaman is a 2017 fellow in the Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program, funded by the Sy Syms Foundation. The Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program at Women’s eNews fellowship supports editorial and development opportunities for editorial interns in the pursuit of journalistic excellence.

]]>Update: The ERA and Title IXhttps://womensenews.org/2017/08/update-the-era-and-title-ix/
https://womensenews.org/2017/08/update-the-era-and-title-ix/#commentsMon, 07 Aug 2017 01:41:21 +0000http://womensenews.org/?p=2430473After Meghan Hampsey was raped, she called her mom. She was a junior at George Washington University. Her mother, who lived in New York, got in the car. She arrived in DC four hours later and spent the weekend with Hampsey in her twin-sized bed.

“I am really lucky to have a strong support network,” Hampsey said, when she spoke of this moment. Not only did she have her family on her side, but she also had Title IX.

Title IX is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs. Under Title IX, schools ranging from K–12 to private universities must make sure that all students have equal access to education. This includes proactively responding to claims of sexual assault.

Hampsey, who had taken a leave of absence the semester before her rape, said that her Title IX office helped her graduate on time, despite what had happened to her. She worked with her Title IX coordinator to reach out to her professors and get extensions on her midterms.

Hampsey chose not to press charges against her attacker, either criminally or internally, because she had seen first-hand the retraumatization of survivors and did not want that for herself. Still, she felt her school’s Title IX office worked for her.

Mahroh Jahangiri was not as lucky. She was raped during her sophomore year of high school. She had no idea that Title IX existed and no clue where to turn.“I was terrified of the cops as a brown and Muslim person in this country, and I just chose to report to no one at all because I didn’t know I could go to my school,” Jahangiri said. “I ended up dropping out.”

With the help of a supportive family, Jahangiri continued her high school education at home and went on to college. A decade later, she is the Executive Director of Know Your IX, the survivor- and youth-led organization that empowers students to end sexual violence in their schools. Know Your IX helped pen an open letter to current US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos published Wednesday, July 12, urging DeVos to enforce Title IX protections. The letter was signed by 114 survivors, including Hampsey.

This letter was a response to events of the last month, which have proven cause for concern among advocates and survivors, as they worry that their Title IX protections could be rolled back by the current administration.

First came the withdrawal of protections for transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice, as guaranteed by Title IX under the Obama administration. Then came the news that budget constraints at the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the department charged with investigating Title IX violations, would lead to cutbacks in initiating proactive investigations. This was followed by an announcement from Candice Jackson, Acting Assistant Secretary of OCR, stating that the department plans to hide the list of schools under investigation for Title IX violations from the public. The final straw was the news that DeVos planned to meet with “men’s rights” organizations, which Jahangiri refers to as “right-wing hate groups,” to discuss Title IX.

“When the news came out that DeVos was both planning to roll back protections [on Title IX] and spending her time discussing the law and its nuances with hate groups rather than with survivors, we were outraged,” Jahangiri said. “Unfortunately, we have an administration that’s hell bent on targeting the most vulnerable young people.”

While Jahangiri felt rage, Hampsey felt fear. “That those are the people she’s choosing to meet with, from the get-go, sends a message that she does not care about survivors and…she doesn’t believe survivors,” Hampsey said. “The idea that they are going to make it even harder for survivors is just, truthfully, dangerous. It really, really scares the shit out of me.”

But things would not be so scary for Hampsey if she were protected by an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), at least not according to the National Organization for Women (NOW), which states on its website that the ERA would “make it significantly more difficult to roll back progress on women’s equality.”

The Fight for the ERA

The ERA is nothing new. It was proposed in 1923 and passed by Congress in 1972. It needed a majority vote by the states—an approval by at least 38 states total—to be ratified. Unfortunately, it fell three states short of ratification by its 1982 deadline and was never brought into law.

For Terry O’Neill, a feminist attorney and the former president of NOW, the ERA is necessary because it provides a “principle of equal protection for all women,” a principle upon which new laws can be built. “With most constitutional provisions, you have to then pass laws and the basis for the law is the constitutional provision itself,” O’Neill said. “For federal legislation, because the United States government is a government of limited powers, any law that it passes has to have some platform in the Constitution.”

It is not as if there are no protections for women in the Constitution, though. In 1971, a year before the ERA was sent to the states for ratification, the Supreme Court “applied the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to strike down a law that discriminated against women,” according to the National Women’s Law Center. Since then, the 14th Amendment, along with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prevents sex discrimination in employment, have been used as the basis for women’s rights in the United States.

Some, like Sylvia Law, professor at New York University and one of the nation’s leading scholars in both gender justice and constitutional law, argue that the ERA is not worth talking about in this day and age. “The serious fights today are about women’s abilities to control their own bodies, whether it is about right to contraception and abortion or sexual assault and harassment,” Law said. In her view, the ERA of the 1970s is too limited. “It was a really very modest effort to change things,” Law said. “It quite deliberately did not take on issues of discrimination on the basis of reproductive choice or pregnancy. It was silent on most of those things.” She added that an ERA that addresses those issues would be a different ERA.

For O’Neill, though, the ERA does not need to change its language to be effective in today’s society. She believes that it is worded broadly enough so that it can be read in an intersectional way. “It goes far beyond equal pay for equal work or women’s ability to become CEOs,” O’Neill said. This intersectional interpretation of the ERA includes protection for victims and survivors of sexual assault. “The ERA would be a huge advantage for those of us promoting Title IX,” O’Neill said. “It makes Title IX more of a mandate, mandated by the people of this country through the constitutional amendment process.”

The ERA and Title IX

Law notes that “it’s a complex relationship” between Title IX and the ERA. If the ERA were ratified, it would be limited to the state and would not protect women against discrimination at private establishments, like universities. By the same token, campus sexual assault is typically handled within the school itself through different processes than criminal investigations.

Still, while Title IX is generally enforced distinctly from national law, “the political movement that would make the ERA possible would also make Title IX a more aggressively and more politically popular, important tool,” Law said.That Title IX could stand to be strengthened is an opinion shared by most. According to O’Neill, the law has the potential to be effective, but it is not effective yet. “Right now, colleges are specifically refusing to treat victims equally with rapists,” O’Neill said. “The colleges specifically take the position that, unlike any other wrongdoing on campus, the victim is presumed to be lying.” “If somebody breaks into your dorm room and steals your computer, you are not presumed to be lying. But is somebody rapes you, you are presumed to be lying. Most college campuses operate that way and that’s a total denial of equal educational opportunities,” she added.

O’Neill was sure to distinguish Title IX enforcement from criminal law. “Colleges do not put people in jail. They do not deprive people of their actual liberty. They do not lock people up in prisons. The court systems do that,” she said. “Obviously, for all criminal proceedings where you are going to be locked up, yes, there you need a presumption of innocence. But when you are talking about adjudicating whether a student has committed a rape, there should be no presumption of innocence.”

Hampsey, who admits she is one of the few people at GW who has had a really positive experience with her Title IX office, said that Title IX failed her classmate and friend, who Hampsey said had to graduate with her attacker, even after he was found guilty of assaulting her. In response, Hampsey and a group of other students protested at graduation, dropping a banner with the hashtag #GWProtectsRapists. GW is not currently one of the 242 universities under investigation by the Office of Civil Rights for Title IX violations but, according to Hampsey, her friend is planning to file a Title IX complaint.

Filing a Title IX Complaint

Title IX investigations are filed with the Office of Civil Rights in three ways. The first route is through compliance review, which entails the proactive investigations opened by OCR that, due to budget constraints, are likely to diminish. The second is via complaints made by students, such as Hampsey’s friend, who claim that the school did not adequately handle their sexual assault allegations. The third way is through complaints made by those accused of sexual assault who claim either that their school did not give them due process or that they were discriminated against on the basis of their sex during the investigation. Due Process is a clause of the 14th Amendment that guarantees the right to a fair hearing. Remember the 14th Amendment? The same amendment that guarantees women equal protection under the law also guarantees rights for those accused of sexual assault.

Since 2015, over 100 individuals have taken their complaints a step further by filing lawsuits, alleging that their schools “violated their rights in the pursuit of investigating and adjudicating sexual assault,” according to a database kept by the group Title IX For All. O’Neill believes that some students may be using the Due Process Clause as a weapon.“It’s a common tactic, especially by predatory rapists, to aggressively go after anybody who holds them accountable for their actions,” she said.

But Jahangiri disagrees. “The MRA [men’s right’s activits] crowd and, sometimes accidentally, even our own movement make it sound like survivors’ rights come at the expense of accused students, but they don’t,” Jahangiri said. “Title IX protects all students and guarantees fair, transparent campus proceedings for all students.” “We’re doing this work because we do believe in fair process and we also believe in protecting victims,” Jahangiri said. “There’s no zero-sum game between the two of those. We can have both.”

The United States can do a far better job in punishing people who engage in sexual assault, but without violating their rights to due process, Law added. “If you want to take the problem of sexual assault seriously, you just have to devote the resources to vigorous prosecution of people, including granting them all of their rights under the 14th amendment.”

For O’Neill, the ERA may be the key to increased resources. “It is a reason for lawmakers to put more resources into Title IX enforcement, to allow Title IX to grow and be available to all the different types of girls and women seeking an equal educational opportunity in whatever situation they find themselves,” O’Neill said. And while she acknowledges getting the ERA passed under this administration will be tough, she still has hope. “The Trump/Pence administration is deeply misogynistic. We all know that if the ERA were to be ratified by the two remaining states, that it would be an uphill battle to have it enforced,” O’Neill said. “But you have to start somewhere.”

Hampsey agrees. “I think at this point, given our current administration, the more we have in writing, the safer we are,” she said. “If we don’t have it in writing to begin with, what do we have?”

Christina Shaman is a 2017 fellow in the Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program, funded by the Sy Syms Foundation. The Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program at Women’s eNews fellowship supports editorial and development opportunities for editorial interns in the pursuit of journalistic excellence.